The Way I See Things
    by Sean Healy
 
My mother's father's family came to America in 1914, from Belgium, after the Germans invaded early in World War 1.
 
My father's father's family came to America in 1847, from Ireland, at the height of the Potato Famine.  Although the
potato crop was bad for 4 consecutive years throughout Europe, other crops did quite well.  Other countries did fine,
but in Ireland, over a million people starved to death, while crops spoiled in warehouses because the English landowners couldn't ship it to England, where it would fetch a higher price, fast enough.  (If you'd like to know more, check out
Cecil Woodham-Smith's THE GREAT HUNGER).
 
My father's mother's family came to America in 1754, from Ireland.  I'm not certain of the exact circumstances, but at
that time, an Irish Catholic was not permitted to own a weapon, land, or any property valued at over 5 pounds, and was
not permitted to earn more than a third of the value of his crops.  No Irish Catholic was permitted to vote, hold public
office, be a doctor, lawyer, trader, or other professional, or work in the civil service.  No Irish Catholic was permitted
to get an education.  The Catholic religion was outlawed, any priest unfortunate enough to be discovered would be
executed, and all Irish Catholics were compelled to pay a tithe (10% of their earnings) to the Anglican Church.
(There's plenty of good Irish history books out there, but for a great read, pick up TRINITY by Leon Uris some time).
 
My mother's mother's family came to America in 1746, from Scotland, after the English massacred the Highlanders at Culloden, and then passed punitive laws to destroy the Gaelic culture, extending even to the outlawing of the kilt, the
bagpipes, and the Gaelic language.
 
Three out of four of my grandparents' ancestors came to this country because of persecution by the English.
I don't hate the English.  I spent 4 of my teen-aged years living near London during the early Reagan/Thatcher era.
As individuals they're just people, like you and me and everyone else.  But having been an Irish American in London
at a time when the IRA was setting off bombs there, when the British soldiers and police were shooting peaceful
civil rights demonstrators in Ulster, when Bobby Sands was elected to the House of Commons while on a hunger
strike in prison (he and his fellows were demanding to be treated as political prisoners, rather than common criminals,
and the hunger strike ended with his death), I have some idea what it feels like to be a persecuted minority.  I am in no
way trivializing the experiences many Native Americans, or Americans of African, Asian, or Latin descent face daily;
I am simply stating that I have a background that gives me some ability to empathize.
 
My point is that most Americans of European descent came to this country either fleeing persecution or seeking
opportunities that did not exist, for them, in their native lands.  And beginning with the Wampanoag Indians who
helped the Mayflower Pilgrims through their first years, many immigrants, arriving with nothing and knowing no one,
have been helped by those who came before.  Many have also faced prejudice and hardship, but today formerly discriminated-against groups like the Irish and Italians have largely assimilated, and other groups, while still having
a long ways to go, are making progress.  I love my country, and I think it's one of the best places on earth to live.
If you haven't travelled, and seen the living conditions in many other parts of the world, you have no idea how
fortunate, on the average, we are in the United States of America.
 
I love my country, but I am deeply concerned about what it is becoming.  It's nowhere near as bad as the conditions
my ancestors fled, but we're on the wrong track, and it's going to take a lot of hard work by a lot of people to stop
the trend.
 
As recently as a year and a half ago, I was totally disinterested in politics.  I'd been unable to completely avoid the
whole impeachment mess, but at the time I'd recently married and was starting a new job, and what I'd learned
about the President's personal conduct and the hypocrisy of the Republicans out to get him pretty much turned
me off completely.  Not my problem, and nothing I can do about it anyway.
 
Some time in late '99, I heard a bit on NPR about John McCain.  I don't remember what exactly it was that caught
my interest, but I started browsing the internet, looking for more information.  Somehow, I found my way to www.realchange.org, which had surprising information about all the candidates who were running.  What I most
clearly remember was the write-up of George W. Bush, and thinking, 'there's no way this guy can possibly get elected.'
 
Fast forward to the South Carolina primary.  Keating Five--okay, that's legit.  His wife was addicted to painkillers once?  Maybe true, hardly relevant, dirty pool.  Venereal disease?  Fathering children, colored children even, out of wedlock?  Insane?  Race-baiting, gay-bashing, Jew-slamming, Bob Jones University?  The man who was AWOL from the Texas
National Guard calls into question the patriotism and bravery of a man who spent years in a Vietcong POW camp?
This man has no business in public life.  But it works.  He wins.
 
I know the media's got a liberal bias, everyone says so, right?  I keep waiting for a story to run on Bush's alleged past
drug use.  I expect to hear more details about the gaps in his military service.  I just know there's going to be a story
about the oil companies he drove into the ground, the irregularities surrounding the Texas Rangers deal, the insider
trading, the alleged abortion & illegitimate child, the corruption and rewarding of donors in Texas.
 
I discover Joe Conason, Gene Lyons, Eric Alterman, Molly Ivins, www.buzzflash.com, www.bartcop.com, www.mediawhoresonline, www.bushwatch.com, www.americanpolitics.com.  I'm still waiting for ABC, NBC,
CBS, CNN, Fox, the New York Times, the Washington Post, to follow up on these stories.
 
The final straw is watching the first Bush-Gore debate.  I watched Bush get creamed.  He clearly didn't know what
he was talking about half the time.  He said we needed to develop Mexican Oil so we wouldn't be dependent on
foreign oil.  The man who raised more than $100 million, smashing all fund-raising records, claimed his opponent
was outspending him two-to-one.  The lame 'invented the calculator' joke.  Obviously I wasn't watching the same
debate as the network pundits.  Instead of calling Bush on his claim to have passed a Patients Bill of Rights in Texas,
when in fact he vetoed it, then faced with a veto-proof revote allowed it to become law without signing it, they're
still talking about Love Story, Love Canal, Inventing the Internet, Buddhist Temple--all of which have been debunked
--as well as mistaking one trip of dozens with James Lee Witt for a trip he actually took with Witt's deputy, as well
as assuming Gore's lying again when someone contradicts the true--passed on to him by the girl's Republican father
--story of a girl who had to stand in class because there weren't enough desks to go around.
 
Then again, by now I know, thanks primarily due to Conason and Lyons' The Hunting of the President' and the
sources they reference, that the mainstream, corporate media got it continuously wrong in the various Clinton
'scandals,' and has simply been serving as a megaphone for the radical right.  GE, Disney, Viacom, AOL/Time
Warner, Rupert Murdoch, Knight-Ridder--Liberal Media my @$$!  Only a blind person, or one who has given
it no thought at all, can truly believe in a liberal media or that FOX is "fair and balanced."
 
I won't rehash it all.  We all lived through the travesty that was Florida, from Bush's cousin at the FOX election
desk to the shameful, criminal 12/12 decision by the Rehnquist Five ("A day that shall live in infamy").  I do want
to note one thing I haven't seen commented on, however.  In Jake Tapper's "Down and Dirty," he reveals that, to
his knowledge, the Jeb-Harris rumors were a lie invented by a senior member of the Gore campaign.  I don't always
agree with Tapper, but he's always struck me as honest, impartial (at least, equally contemptuous of both sides),
and competent, so unless someone finds some polaroids, I have to believe that this was a dirty trick.  We have to
remember not to hate our opponents, no how matter how hard they make it.  Sometimes, when I'm myself ranting
about Dubya, I hear echoes of the Clinton-haters, and their conviction that he was everything from a drug-dealer
to a murderer.  I hear my Floridian in-laws, convinced that the Moon landings and the Holocaust were hoaxes,
certain that the UN is a front for the evil Jews and their New World Order/One World Government conspiracy,
no longer giving campaign tips and contributions to Pat Buchanan because he's gotten too liberal.
 
When we hate, when we feel so negatively towards and contemptuous of someone, we are willing to believe
anything of them.  When someone lies about them, and we believe it, we just give them justification for their
beliefs and tactics.  I feel dirty, now, for having been so angry at Jeb and Katherine Harris and what they did
in Florida that I believed a lie.  What they were doing was bad enough without it being embellished like that.
I was so used to seeing the compliant media cover up anything negative about the Right that I fell for this one
hook, line and sinker.
 
Conservatives aren't going away.  We can't change all their minds on all issues.  And we shouldn't.  The success
of a democracy requires an informed populace and the airings and discussion of all points of view.  And sometimes, Conservatives are right.  They weren't right about remaining colonies of England, they weren't right about slavery,
they weren't right about equal rights for women and minorities.  They're not right in many of the positions they take
today.  But they are so convinced of their own righteousness that they feel that they can break laws in pursuit of
what they see as a noble goal--see Joe McCarthy, Watergate, October Surprise, Iran Contra, the Clinton witch
hunt.  That's a trap to which zealots on the Left are equally vulnerable.  Both the French and Russian revolutions
started as noble causes for the betterment of all.
 
If we demonize conservatives, we only harden the lines between them and us.  The tensions, the tactics, the verbal
and political warfare escalate.  We have to stand our ground when they're wrong.  Allowing the investigations of
Iran-Contra, Iraqgate, et al, to die sent two messages to the GOP--one, that they could get away with anything,
and two, that they could investigate the hell out of their opponents and take and keep a lock on the high ground.
But we also have to work with them to get anything done.  You can't work with someone you hate.
 
We don't have to lie to win.  Gore got the most votes.  The Democrats consistently outpoll the Republicans on
the issues, which is why Bush tried to, and was allowed to, run as a moderate with a lot of plans that sounded
vaguely Democratic.  What we have to do is find good candidates who can get the truth out and get people
motivated.  Find issues you can get the other side's supporters to agree with--those red-state voters who
probably don't know any people not just like themselves except as stereotypes, basically good people, if a little
closed-minded, who don't have the breadth of experience to see through the lies of the Limbaughs and the Gingriches.
"Divide and Conquer" is a strategy older than the English in Ireland or the Romans in Gaul.  We've got to find ways
of reaching those Republicans not blinded by the hatred spewed by the Falwells and David Dukes, help them see
how they'd benefit from Democratic policies, win their trust and earn their votes.
 
A final note--as of 7/3, despite the alleged budget surplus, at this time the National Debt is $5,698,195,769,465.40.
It is more than $24 billion higher than it was at the start of the fiscal year.  The national debt is three times the annual
revenue collected by the federal government.  The single greatest expense Uncle Sam has is interest on that debt.
If you had an employee who was earning $20 grand a year, and you knew he owed Visa $60 grand on top of his
mortgage and car note, and he came to you and asked for a 10% pay cut, you'd think he was crazy.
Well, that's what our politicians have done, they got away with it, and we're all going to pay for it. Privacy Policy . .